Vonage : All reviewsAll reviews of |  about |
|
|
»next review in page
very few problems at all. I got the caller id to work after i got a new phone. update December 19 2007 i have had the service for a few month now service is awsome hardly every goes out . price is really affordable 33 month update april 27 2008 I have had the service for a awhile now service is great I got a APC battery back up to run my vonage when the power is out . no real problems with the service it is a good investment I am unsure how long vonage will be around if it dies i will switch to AT&T for voip. update December 15 2008 vonage service is going downhill fast. They are forcing a new 5000 minute cap if you go over they will upgrade you to a business account which cost allot more money. I am pissed off about that I canceled the service and went to a cricket cell phone service. Best move I have ever made Followup comments:
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
The service has been stable, the quality of calls is excellent, as good as or better than POTS. The couple of issues I had in the beginning were handled by Vonage CS techs in a professional manner. I believe I waited on hold once for 30 minutes, the other two times for less than 10....but since then (last summer) I haven't had any issues at all. At that time, the techs spent much time with me, at least once for an hour, troubleshooting and identifying my problem (one problem turned out to be my phone, and one an issue with a backbone in London...neither had to do with Vonage). Even my calls to London were crystal clear.....one of my issues was with static/occasional dropped call....which turned out to be on the London end. Once that was dealt with over there, the static disappeared, and the calls were great. They also have great features: voicemail, call forwarding, caller ID, porting of POTS #, nice web dashboard, etc. I am saving hundreds of dollars using Vonage...its the best thing I have ever done. However, I still understand that my service is at the mercy of my internet connection, and that it could be affected by that. I also have a basic POTS line for 911 emergency calls. I can't think of one bad thing to say about Vonage at this point. 3/15/07 Still using Vonage, and am still VERY happy with it. The calls are crystal clear and the service is rock solid. I can't remember the last time I had an outage that was caused by Vonage. I've recommended Vonage to my daughter and they are also very happy with it. I would encourage anyone to try it, keeping in mind that ANY VoIP service is highly dependent on the stability of your ISP connection. 12/26/07 Not much new to report, Vonage is still as solid as ever for me. Hopefully they will get their patent issues straightened out and be able to continue this great service. I have no desire to move to my ISP's VoIP service at this time. 1/3/09 Still a happy Vonage user. Have absolutely no complaints or issues. Followup comments:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
UPDATE March 3, 2008: Another boring review... The service continues to work just fine, with zero problems. This little phone gets used all the time, and not once has it failed. I make a lot of calls all over the US, Canada, and parts of Europe for free. UPDATE August 13, 2007: Still rock-solid service, with no problems and good voice quality. I actually think that the voice quality has improved over the past year or so. I'm finding that more and more "free" wi-fi places are requiring login, and the phone won't allow me to do that, but that's not any fault of Vonage. I've heard of software being in the works to allow the UTStarcom F1000 phone to login/authenticate, and hope it will be a reality soon, or that they come out with a new phone with that feature. UPDATE April 12, 2007: The phone still works flawlessly. Free calling to some parts of Europe has really been a boon for me. I get good voice quality - about the same as a regular phone. I use it here at work with my wireless router, and when I travel. I recommend the WiFi setup highly. If only I could use my account with the software as well as with the Wi-Fi phone, then I could connect from more places. I have Vonage with the UTStarcom WiFi phone, and use it every day for all my long distance calling. My plan is $24.99/month. Recently, while on a trip to Europe, I found that whenever I was close to an open WAP, such as in all my hotels, I could use the phone to call the US completely free! Was I ever surprised! Most days I was on the phone calling back to the States for at least an hour, and the calls were crystal-clear, just as though I were back here close to home. The UTStarcom works flawlessly for me, but some places with free WiFi access do block whatever port VOIP uses. Caller ID, voice mail, and the other features I use have not once been a problem for me. Followup comments:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
I Bought All The Gear At Circuit City and Set-Up Everything On-line. Only Took About 1 Hour. So Far I'm Extremely Happy With Vonage. Yes There Have Been A Few Outages But For The Price...And Fairly New Technology I Expected Some Issues. 911 Is Not An Issue for me As I Have a Backup Line With Verizon. Haven't Had To Deal With Tech Support Yet... But From What I have heard, I hope I never have too..lol If Your Looking To Save Some Money On Your monthly telephone Bill, I Would Definitely Recommend Giving Vonage A try. Still going strong since 2004! 6-23-2008 Just an updated review. Service is still going ok. Price has gone up a little more than I would like. I had to call customer service a few times and It was an ok experience...not the best. Whenever there are issues I try to figure things out myself rather than call them and deal with the CS reps. Other than a few small audio issues everything has still been good. My old router crapped out and they sent me a new one after I threatened to leave...lol I'm not sure how much longer I may keep them? We will see. 01-01-2009 Service is still going good. My only issue is that after a few weeks of use the Motorola router needs to be rebooted or else calls start forwarding or we will get a pause before answering Hello. And rebooting router wipes all previous settings which can be a big PITA. Followup comments:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
UPDATE: As of January 1st, 2009, my Vonage service has been very good, so much so, that I ported my main home telephone number to Vonage, for a total of two Vonage lines. Once in a blue moon during peak usage time of my OOL Broadband connection, I may experience a dropped call, but it's always immediately restored, I still love Vonage and the savings compared to my previous expenses are now significant. Followup comments:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
I decided to go and get the hardware at Best Buy, and they had several to choose from but I would up getting a Linksys device that has two phone ports, wireless and then 3 RJ-45 jacks. It also functions as a router and DHCP server. The model is a WRT54GP2. I brought it home, unplugged my old Linksys router and put this in its place, swapped the cords around and plugged everything back in, turned on the cable modem first, then the router and then rebooted my computer and finally plugged in a phone. Then I went and signed up for the Residential unlimited package from Vonage. I filled in a few forms, set up the hardware to work with the service and in less than 15 minutes I picked up the phone and got a dial tone and made calls to various states and a 2 hour call to Canada. The only major complaint I have about this hardware is that if you want to make a simple change it requires a reboot. It seems like you log into the router and it wants to reboot. I also requested notification of when an 816 area code number would become available. So when a number did become available, I paid less than $10.50 to swap the number over. That process took less than 20 minutes also. That will allow me to drop my land line from SBC. I figure I can pay 26 bucks for just a dial tone or I can pay 27 for Vonage and get voicemail, three way calling, call waiting, caller ID, unlimited long distance, calls to Canada are included in the monthly cost. Call quality is very good, but I have also had complaints of where it sounds like I have hung up on people or that I break up towards the end of words and sentences. Calls to Canada are good quality and no longer cost me a dollar to get an answering machine. That alone will recover the cost of the hardware alone over time. Update 06.10.2005 In the past few months the call quality has been improving. Price has stayed at a stable level, website seems to be working much better when I try and access it. I still get an echo once and a while, but over the slight problems I was having seemed to be resolved. Overall, I am very happy with the service and I would have no problems telling people to check it out. Update 01-03-06 Service is still great. Monthly bills have not changed at all since I ordered service just over a year ago. Call quality is excellent, features are all working. Voicemail is a touch slow sometimes, but overall I am still very pleased with my service. A new firmware was sent to my ATA/router, and that has helped reduce the number of reboots needed. Still saving a ton of money compared to my POTS service, and the virtual number option looks very enticing, since I could have a "presence" in Canada, while still being in the states. Overall, I am still very happy with my service, and I still would not hesitate to tell people to switch if they have a decent internet connection. Update 04-22-06 I recently added a virtual number to my service, adding $5 a month to my bill. I got the number so family that lives in Canada can call us, without incurring long distance charges. The service has been stable, voicemail to e-mail option is really nice. That has been handy, since I use a gmail account for it, I can access voicemail anywhere I have access to a computer with sound and internet access. All other features have been useful, when needed. Overall, still very happy with the service and I would happily tell anyone to use Vonage, as long as they have a stable internet connection. Update 09-20-06 Still works great, as long as my internet connection is stable. Great value for services, works as advertised with no issues other than internet service related problems. Update 03-22-08 Still no problems, just minor account changes through the years. Still a great value. Would not go back to pots line again. Update 01-01-09 Been a customer for 5 years solid. Only downtime can be traced to ISP not Vonage. Rock solid service otherwise. Fantastic service. Followup comments:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
Followup comments:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
Update 12/3/2008: I got a proactive call from Vonage customer care. I was told that existing customers were supposed to have received 60 days notice of the price increase. Due to the error, they will be reversing the charge and giving me the $14.99 rate for 6 months. Kudos to Vonage for proactively making calls to the customers that had their rate increased without notice. Update 12/2/2008: The Residential Basic 500 plan has increased from $14.99 to $17.99. With the fake fees and tax, the bill now comes to $23.31. Vonage did this without any notification to it's customers. There is no excuse for that. I can't understand why Vonage works so hard at driving customers away. At this price, the service is no longer worth it. Vonage has become the same phone company that they fought to win customers away from. I'm just short of 6 years as a customer and I have started the process to port my number to voip.ms. Honestly, I feel like a fool for supporting Vonage for so long. Bye. --------- As of Jan 1, 2008, I've been a Vonage customer for 5 years. The service is exceptionally stable. Dial tone and voice quality is always there. Setup is painless for the average non-technical user. The set of features is worthy. I started with the residential unlimited plan then changed to small business when I was working from home a lot; now back to residential. Each time I switched plans it was quick and painless. Vonage replaced my ATA twice. Easy and convenient process. Customer service in the past 2 years has been great to deal with. The reps speak English as a first language and have been either in the USA or Canada. However, this wasn't always the case. I had a fax line for a while. It worked about 90% of the time. Fax on VoIP is inherently hit-or-miss. The worst thing about Vonage is that they have jumped on the bogus "fee" bandwagon .... Regulatory Recovery Fee, etc. The added fees and taxes have to make you question if POTS isn't a better choice. The pain of trying to cancel Vonage is legendary. Various forums are packed with stories of bad experiences with "retention agents". Vonage needs to move to the next level of customer and allow BYOD and allow Pay-as-you-go plans. The "unlimited" plans are more than most people need. You can get excellent service and PAYG plans from providers like Callcentric. Overall, Vonage is probably a good choice for the average non-technical user. I hope they are around for a long time. Followup comments:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next review in page (previous review)
HOWEVER Their price increase this month just cost them a customer. I have the 500 minute plan that was just increased from $14.99 to $17.99 ($22+ after fees and taxes) It is no longer a good value at this price. If their plan was to try and get people to change to the unlimited plan I think it backfired. Just signed up for voipo service based on all the reviews and I am looking forward to the new features they offer that vonage was lacking. Followup comments:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
»next page (previous review)
Followup comments:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Vonage
(54)
(36)
Alma,Crawford,AR
$20 per month (12 month contract)
about 10 days
"cheap service"
"New 5000 minute cap cancled service as soon as cap was in place"
"good service as long as you dont go over the 5000 munute"
·
·
·
